SETTING UP THE CAMERAS

• The exposure triangle 

  • consists of three variables that adjust how a camera captures light: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Together, these three elements properly expose a shot. The three variables of the exposure triangle are all dependent on each other.

• Focal length

• White Balance

• Histogram 

• Check the battery before

• Make sure you have an SD card

• Shoot in RAW + JPEG

UPLOADING THE FOOTAGE

• Download your footage onto the computers 

• Take out the battery and make sure it's charging

• Name your Files

• Save to a flash drive, portable hard drive, or cloud storage 

• Format the SD card

POST-PRODUCTION

• Crop 

• Golden Ratio

• Rule of thirds

• Levels

• Curves 

Required Reading: “In Plato’s Cave” chapter 1 from On Photography by Susan Sontag, 1977 available as PDF from Prof Carvalho's Blackboard page

Required Viewing: From LinkedIn Learning “Photoshop 2022 Essential Training” (please try following along with your own images):

ch 4. Digital Image Essentials sections (all tutorials)

ch 6. Cropping and Straightening Images (first three tutorials)

ch 7. Layers (first tutorial)

ch. 12 Adjustment Layer Essentials (first three tutorials)

Part 1) The opening chapter from Susan Sontag’s On Photography reflects upon the power of image-taking.  Well before the advent of the smartphone, Sontag discusses the ubiquity of the camera and image-taking.  This is the longest reading of the semester for this course.  The reading is assigned to place image-making in a critical context.  What does it mean to you to capture images and create graphics?  Throughout the semester, you will be asked to realize ten projects, each quite different from the other as you are asked to use various tools.  Although each project is distinct, please consider them as a body of work; consider how one may relate to the next and how you as a media maker can build from one to the next.  Please write a one to three-paragraph reflection on how you use photography and image making.  How could you represent visually through photography or illustration or the combination of image and text notions of our world now?  Create a new HTML page for this reflection, title it “readings.html” and link to it from your class homepage (index.html).  Add a link back to index.html on your readings.html page.  Update the readings.html page with each reflection – project or reading reflection.

Part 2) Based on the composition and framing concepts that were covered in the lecture, take at least five photos with lab DSLR cameras, online labs use the best camera that you have available (phone or DSLR or other).  Adjust your settings so you are taking photos at the highest resolution pixel width and height and make sure you are shooting in Camera RAW

Choose the two images that you think are compositionally the most compelling and save a copy of both images in their original pixel dimensions (in other words, keep a backup of the original file). Crop a copy of one of the images to 1920 px by 1080 px and crop a copy of the other image to 5”x7”.  Now, modify the Tonal Range of the two images using an adjustment layer following the steps in the chapters above. Export these as jpg images and make sure they are under 2 MB in their file size.

Now, add each photo to two new pages on your website. Place each of the cropped images on a separate page and connect them with links to the home page and to each other. Make sure that all pages can navigate back to the home page. Add a paragraph tag on your image web pages explaining why you chose these two images and what compositional ideas you were using to create visual interest. e.g. what compositional ideas you were using to create visual interest (golden spiral? Rule of thirds?) and describe your experience working with the histogram to improve the tonal range.